Bush is up 45-43 when Nader is factored in... which it seems he always ought to be, since the man is running. This isn't some hypothetical eventuality. It's the current reality. Why wouldn't he be factored in?

The media is against Nader's run, so they've decided to just sort of pretend he isn't running.

Maybe they should just ask respondents to assume, for the sake of make-pretend, that there is currently no budget deficit as well nor any violence in Iraq, and see how that affects the numbers. Why not? If you're going to inquire about made-up bullshit scenarios that help Kerry, like Nader not running, why shouldn't Bush get similar assistance?

At any rate:

A majority (52%) of registered voters say they have a favorable opinion of Bush, 51 percent say the same of Kerry (10 percent say they "don't know" and three percent say they had never heard of Kerry). ... Majorities also say Bush ... says what he believes, not just what people want to hear (62% vs. 45% for Kerry); that they would trust him to make the right decisions during an international crisis (56% vs. 46% for Kerry); and that he is honest and ethical (54% vs. 53% for Kerry). Less than half (49%) say Bush cares about people like them, (compared with 52% for Kerry). On Bush and Kerry's political leanings, 34 percent of registered voters say Bush is too conservative (60% disagree), while 38 percent say Kerry is too liberal (46% disagree).

When asked about Kerry's Senate vote last year against the administration's $87 billion request to fund the military efforts in Iraq and
Afghanistan, almost half of registered voters (49%) say Kerry's vote will not
affect their presidential vote; 27 percent say it will make them less likely
to vote for him, 20 percent say more likely. Forty-eight percent say Kerry is politically motivated and changes his position when he thinks it will improve his image or help him win an election; 38 percent say he is thoughtful and changes his position as circumstances change or he learns more about an issue.

27% want to know where he got that cool-ass Flyin' Dog.

This is the fourth big-time poll showing Bush re-taking the lead over Kerry since Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq on May 3rd.

Charges Dropped Against Captain Yee, Accused of Spying for Terrorists

Government and defense lawyers seem to disagree about what the dismissal of charges may mean.

"Chaplain Yee has won,'' his attorney, Eugene R. Fidell of Washington, said in a statement Friday. "The Army's dismissal of the classified information charges against him represents a long overdue vindication.''

...

In dismissing the charges, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo, which operates the detention center, cited "national security concerns that would arise from the release of the evidence'' if the case proceeded.

National I.D.'s: Why Not?

It's almost a silly argument to have, since there's apparently some rule we don't know about that says this idea cannot be discussed rationally and that anyone proposing it will be branded a Nazi by either side of the political aisle.

Jane Galt, however, isn't afraid to be called a Nazi, and wants to know precisely what the objections to a national ID might be. But she doesn't want the old bromides, like that idiotic Ben Frankly quote that a lot of people seem to believe constitutes an irrefutable argument.

Our take is this: You are already required to carry an insecure, easily-forged ID around for most facets of your life. You need ID on you to do any sort of travelling other than walking. You need a driver's license to drive; you need a driver's license or passport to travel on a train or plane. (But not a bus-- why, we don't know.)

If the country has already decided that carrying ID is necessary for almost all forms of travel, why not carrying a secure ID? What precisely is the argument here? That the government or transportation-businesses can force you to carry ID, but only if that ID is easily forged or illegally obtained?

What is the logic of that, we wonder? That criminals have some sort of right to exploit a laughably-insecure ID system?

Should the US Enter into a "Grand Bargain" With the Mullarchy of Iran?

Daniel Dreizner weighs the pros and cons of the Iranians' back-channel May 4 offer to address US concerns about nuclear weapons, terrorism, and agitation against Israel.

There are a lot of problems with cutting such a deal. As Dreizner recognizes, doing so will probably work against the reformers in Iran; we might thus have a situation where the good is at war with the perfect, as is often the case.

But can we trust these people at all? Evil regimes have a somewhat spotty track-record as regards honoring their "promises." Why, a cynic might even conclude that they only enter into treaties simply as stalling tactics while they continue working on their atomic bombs and terror networks. (See Il, Kim Jung; Arafat, Yasser; Hussein, Saddam.)

Meanwhile, of course, world opinion -- and liberals generally -- demand that the US (or Israel) honor its side of the bargain while receiving nothing at all in return.

But a Pakistani officer, Lt. Col. Hussain, still believes there's a high-value-target being defended:

Hussain said 400 to 500 militants are believed to still be fighting troops with mortars, AK-47s, rockets and hand-grenades. The ferocity of their resistance given the low odds of escape made him confident the high-value terrorist had not escaped.

"I would not rule out any possibility, but with this level of resistance, even after 48 hours (of the latest bombardment), I believe the high-value target is still there," he said.

Even if al-Zawahiri or another Boss Villain isn't there, it's a hell of a thing to surround 400 of these rats and capture or kill them. We'd like to capture the Head Rat, but it's actually the Thug-Rats that execute the bombings and kidnappings and beheadings.

Wait-- Did That Dog Serve With John Kerry in Vietnam?

This dog dances with his owner to "You're the One That I Want" from Grease. For the whole song. And he's actually dancing in sync.

The first twenty seconds are sort of blah. And also, frankly, disturbing-- what possesses a woman to teach her mutt to dance? What kind of weapons-grade lonely causes someone to enlist a golden retriever* as a dance-date?

But stay with it. Champ the Dancin' Wonderdog can really "cut a rug," as the kids are saying nowadays.

Correction: We originally called Champ the Dancin' Wonderdog a border collie. Our apologies to all border collies and golden retrievers.

We also apologize to Champ the Dancin' Wonderdog's trainer/prom-date and to the good folks at Eukenuba Dog Food.

Eukenuba-- proud sponsors of the American Kennel Club since 1954.

Eukenuba Dog Food tastes great, and even if it doesn't, who give a shit? You're feeding it to fucking animals anyway. These are creatures to whom the greatest tastes in the whole world are "My Own Sweaty Dog-Balls" and "Some Other Dog's Dirty Ass."

Apologies: It's Saturday night, and we're sitting here alone and bored. Sorry for the R-Rated tone this otherwise-cute post has taken. We just can't help it.

Kerry "All But Admits" Attending Assassinate-Senators Meeting

But there's so much more. Because it seems that a Kerry supporter was calling up witnesses to Kerry's presence to encourage them to, errr, modify their recollections:

Last week, John Hurley, an organizer of veteran volunteers for Kerry's presidential run, called two men who were quoted in The Star as recalling Kerry attending the Kansas City meeting. John Musgrave of Baldwin City, Kan., said Hurley called him twice and in the second conversation asked the disabled veteran to contact the newspaper reporter to say he had doubts about the memory.

"He said, `I'd like you to consider that before that article comes out call him and tell him you were wrong,' " said Musgrave, who has expressed disappointment with Kerry's position on issues regarding prisoners of war.

Hurley said Friday he believed last week Musgrave was simply mistaken.

"I asked him to be very sure of his recollection, not to change his recollection," Hurley said. "I would apologize to John Musgrave if he thought in any way I was pressuring him."

Maureen Dowd Loses Kerry One Voter

It's a funny thing. Just about every white-collar liberal, no matter how dumb or poorly-read, fancies himself an intellectual. (Blue-collar liberals engage in this fallacy less often.)

It reminds us of the key insight of A Fish Called Wanda. Retarded hit-man Otto insists that he's an intellectual because he reads Nietsche. Wanda tells him monkeys can read Nietsche.

"No they can't!" Otto insists.

"Yes they can, Otto," Wanda sighs. "They just don't understand it."

Maureen Dowd and her ilk sure don't seem to show off much book-learnin', as we used to call it down on the farm. Most of them just natter on about "highbrow" crap they watch on television. Because Maureen Dowd and her friends watch "intellectual" programming like Sex & the City, they are, of course, "intellectuals."

John Kerry managed to get himself "caught" by the press purchasing a book on black-holes and space-time and relativity.

Question:

Do you think anyone in the press will actually quiz him on what the book actually says, or what any of it means?

Or do you think that they applaud Kerry's faux-intellectualism-by-consumer-consumption-- i.e., if you buy a book that an intellectual might read, then that's good enough for government work?

We think the latter-- because that's what reporters do too. We remember all those reporters and media-types ostentatiously lugging around Umberto Eco tomes when Eco was "hot." We wish we had one dollar for every page of those books that weren't read, because, honestly, we'd have an awful lot of dollars.

We figure Maureen Dowd made it halfway through the preface.

But she must be an intellectual. Only intellectuals can tote around a book they never read.

"VC The Flyin' Wonderdog" Update

Kerry: A Senator Who Votes Against Funding Our Troops is "Reckless" and "Irresponsible"

Brit Hume's show tonight carries a devastating piece of file footage from Face the Nation where John "Flippy" Kerry calls his eventual vote "reckless," "irresponsible," and, in sum, a betrayal of our troops in the field.

You could set your Tivo's to record the show.

On the other hand -- something tells us you won't have to make any special effort to see this delicious clip hundreds of times in the coming weeks.

UPDATE! Rich Lowry put the transcript up at NRO's The Corner. Here it is:

KERRY ON KERRY: RECKLESS AND IRRESPONSIBLE This is from "Face the Nation" on September 14, 2003:

Sen. KERRY: I think we need--I think we need to roll back the top end of the Bush tax cut.

McMANUS: If that amendment does not pass, will you then vote against the $87 billion?

Sen. KERRY: I don't think any United States senator is going to abandon our troops and recklessly leave Iraq to--to whatever follows as a result of simply cutting and running. That's irresponsible. What is responsible is for the administration to do this properly now. And I am laying out the way in which the administration could unite the American people, could bring other countries to the table, and I think could give the American people a sense that they're on the right track. There's a way to do this properly. But I don't think anyone in the Congress is going to not give our troops ammunition, not give our troops the ability to be able to defend themselves. We're not going to cut and run and not do the job.

Look, we could--we could do this job over a period of time at greater loss, at greater risk, and with much loss around the world with respect to the United States. The question is will we do this the best way possible so that we do the best to protect our troops and the best to advance the safety and security of the United States?

Now There's the Take on Kerry That Works

Kausfiles gets it right. The problem with Kerry's snowboard-incident curse isn't that he cursed. It's that he's such a self-important prick he had to inform the media that he didn't fall down, that he was knocked down.

Every play basketball with a guy who can't simply just miss a shot, but needs to provide you with a running commentary of why he misses each shot-- the implication being, "I never normally miss, but just now, that cursed pidgeon distracted me"?

They're narcissistic idiots who are so 1) egotistical and 2) insecure they have to make excuses for every minor screw-up they make.

NRO Begins Informal Andrew Sullivan Flip Watch

I do wish Sullivan would save time and come out for Kerry now. In just amatter of time he will come up with the rationalizations, but it's taking him painfully long to get on with it. I'm betting all Kerry will have to do is say that he's against terrorism.

Shock: John Kerry Cusses

With all due respect: Knock it off. You sound like, what's the right word?, fucking pussies.

This is a campaign about manliness and you don't sound very manly jumping up and down whining to Mom that Kerry is using "potty mouth."

And, you know, George W. Bush curses like crazy. And he did so in that Tucker Carlson interview back in 1999/2000, using, yes, the double-dirty-dog f-word in an interview with a reporter.

Learn to tell the difference between a persuasive line of attack and childish, effeminate carping that makes you look worse than the person you're "telling on."

If you want to carp, do so in a way that makes sense. If you want to criticize Kerry for being so juvenile that he's "playing tough" by contrivedly using profane language just to score points with the nebbishy, effeminate press corps, that's fine. But don't go nutters just because Kerry, like Bush, uses a word that most of us do from time to time.

Today's Top Ten

Q: "Do you have any pets that have made an impact on you personally?"

John Kerry: "When I was serving on a swiftboat in Vietnam, my crewmates and I had a dog we called VC. We all took care of him, and he stayed with us and loved riding on the swiftboat deck I think he provided all of us with a link to home and a few moments of peace and tranquility during a dangerous time. One day as our swiftboat was heading up a river, a mine exploded hard under our boat. After picking ourselves up, we discovered VC was MIA. Several minutes of frantic search followed after which we thought we'd lost him. We were relieved when another boat called asking if we were missing a dog. It turns out VC was catapulted from the deck of our boat and landed confused, but unhurt, on the deck of another boat in our patrol."

Ummmm... okay. Whatever you say, John. In Vietnam, you had some sort of genetically-modified Superdog who was trained as a circus acrobat/watersports enthusiast.

Is this guy for real, or is he just misremembering the plot of a bad TV show? BJ of BJ and the Bear was a Vietnam chopper pilot, and he picked up his good-buddy chimp in Da Nang.

Kerry Backs Off Denials About Being Present at Assassination Vote

"If there are valid FBI surveillance reports from credible sources that place some of those disagreements in Kansas City, we accept that historical footnote in the account of his work to end the difficult and divisive war," the statement said.

Ah. "If you have solid evidence, okay, I guess I admit it." We have a feeling this isn't he last time we'll be hearing this formulation from Kerry.

Zawahiri... Dead?

We feel just terrible about passing along third-hand rumors, but we can't help ourselves.

According to posters on Free Republic, Col. Hunt, a military analyst for FoxNews, said tonight on O'Reilly that his sources tell him that Task Force 121 have killed 21 men, one of whom they believe is Zawahiri.

Liberal Patriots React to the News that Either OBL or Zawahiri May Be Cornered or Captured

A Small Victory noted that the super-patriotic kibbitchers at Democratic Underground were, as usual, breaking out the flags and fireworks at the good news that the US might be winning a battle against its sworn enemies.

We decided to look for ourselves and, goodness gracious, wouldn't you know it? She was 100% right. The DU'ers were absolutely thrilled to hear that America was close to a great victory, and made no apologies to anyone about their frenzied flag-waving.

One super-duper patriot despairs that the news will turn out to be right: "It's a fait accompli. Even Bush is smart enough not to risk a failed battle on interntational television. The high value target--or his body--will be brought out of the rubble shortly. The rest is stage management."

We can practically hear "God Bless America" singing through these beautiful words!

Lots of True Blue Patriots are suspicious that CNN, or the media generally, might have some nefarious role in all of this:

"Get ready. Geee willikers… ain't it lucky CNN has one of their top anchors on the scene….. What a coincidence! " notes one American cheerleader.

"Is it just a coincident [sic] that CNN just happened to have an interview with Aaron Brown and the Pakistan leader already scheduled for tonight. What a way to get people to watch" grouses a latter-day Betsy Ross.

Several flag-waving proud Americans wondered if the "media" was holding back on the story to allow US troops to sneak into the battle-zone in order to claim credit for Bush. One star-spangled sweetheart remarked, "[Bush] took credit when the Kurds captured Saddam and left him stoned in a hole until we "found" him. without a free press, Bush can claim to have led the damned raid himself, and a good number of people will buy it."

Other Bicentennial Bravehearts echo this notion, one claiming that the US's orders to Pakistan are, ""Drug him and get him to a spider hole in Afghanistan-- we'll pick him up later."

But it's not just CNN which is suspected of some sort illegal desire to, well, fight America's enemies. Even Colin Powell is accused of somehow being involved in America's war effort, if you can believe such a slander. "Isn't Powell in Pakistan today????" one punctuation-punching patriot perplexes. How convenient…."

"How convenient...." seems to be the password of the day among this Nathan Hale Brigade. They're very fond of it.

One poster, a clear patrilinear descendent of Sergeant York, questions the motivations behind Task Force 121's assistance in the operation (assistance, by the way, which is entirely speculative). "Aren't they [Task Force 121] the ones involved in the Jessica Lynch fraud?" York the Younger whines. "Sounds like TF 121 is the Bushevick Striking Arm for Corrupted Ops."

But several of these flag-knitting nationalists put aside their great joy to worry about the economy. "Capturing Osama does not create jobs," frets someone named Gman, "[or] reduce the trade deficit that is draining jobs and prop back up the US dollar which is one of the causes of high gasoline prices (along with oil company fraud and market manipulation)."

Calimary, a red-white-and-blue niece of her Uncle Sam, is nothing but thrilled to think that OBL might soon be captured; she just worries that maybe it could help Bush in November. "Yeah, better now, when there are still many months to go," this loyal American pouts about the impending capture of an Al Qaeda leader, " and the impact can be thoroughly diffused, than closer to the election. Let's hope, if it happens, that it's soon." She enthuses further: "Let's get this over with, I guess, kind of like root canal."

Ah. The capture of a mass-murderer of American civilians is a distasteful and painful experience, "kind of like a root canal." We're wiping away a tear at the poignancy of such potent patriotism.

"Yes, I hope it is Osama," a very patriotic Rocknation says. But, lest you think Rocknation is simply happy at the capture of an enemy leader, s/he quickly adds: "Because Bush will then have absolutely nothing to run, and he won't be able to justify turning over Iraq to the UN!"

Well, thanks for clarifying. For one moment, we thought perhaps you were taking America's side in a war!

But most of these internet Captain Americas are so concerned with America's security that they began immediately speculating that the capture of OBL or AAZ would actually increase terrorism and result in more American deaths. Funny, they don't seem to worry about this when such men are not about to be captured; we don't remember them congratualting Bush for his wisdom in not capturing these enemies. We only seem to remember them complaining that Bush hasn't yet captured or killed them.

And yet, when we're about to actually do so, they suddenly become worried that it's a very bad thing to kill or capture them. Funny, that. When they're not being captured by Bush, that's bad; but when they ARE being captured by Bush, that's also bad. One might begin to suspect that they're merely changing their claims according to changing facts, but we would never engage in such libel.

At any rate, amidst all the hand-wringing about how much more unsafe this terrible defeat-slash-victory makes us, one Democrat responds thus:

The way to deal with terrorists is to kill them. They are not reasonable and we should waste not one single second pondering how to make them happy.

[To the statement that "I think there will be more terror attacks when Osama is captured."]

Perhaps we should not bother then? Just leave Bin Laden alone. Never mind that he is responsible for the deaths of some 3000 Americans.

Geeze, these defeatist posts are so revolting. If the Democratic Party ever gets associated with such views, we will be a tiny minority party destined to hold zero political power ever again.

Gee-- how could the Democratic Party ever be associated with appeasement, sympathy for the enemy, longing for the deaths of fellow Americans for pure political advantage, and outright treason, when we have the evidence of such super-duper-star-spangled True Blue Patriots on the record?

Bush's "Troops" Ad Now Has an Epilogue: Kerry's Immortal Quote

We Strike At Dawn: Airstrikes & Airborn Assault Planned for First Light

Could be BS, of course. But it's what they're saying.

And they're also saying that no American troops are participating. Which is probably mostly true. But certainly we're at least assisting with tech/signals stuff. And we probably have uninformed "advisors" in the area.

Fox News Updated Report:Fox's latest. We didn't notice much that we haven't already noted in the post below.

Mansoor Ijaz Update: Claims his sources tell him the intelligence suggesting that AAZ is present in the area consisted of intercepted phone calls.

Furthermore, claims that the intelligence suggests he's been injured.

Cold water: 1, we've heard that HVT's were "injured" a thousand freaking times before, and 2, Ijaz doesn't have good track record.

His source is the Bloomberg newswire, BUT: that story is from 1:34 PM -- pretty early in the cycle -- and it seems likely that the word "captured" was used inadvisedly, as a poor synonym for "surrounded" or "cornered."

Cold Water Update: Although Musharraf said that he had a "High Value Target" surrounded, it seems that much of this is speculative on the part of intelligence and military officers. The belief that this is an HVT may be due simply to the high level of resistance put up by Taliban/tribesmen; it could turn out to be a much less senior official, it could turn out to be something else entirely.

Hundreds of Pakistani troops backed by heavy artillery and helicopter gunships raided homes in the nation's tribal region of South Waziristan, two days after a fierce assault in the same area left dozens dead.

On Tuesday, at least 39 people were killed in a raid on suspected Taliban and al Qaeda militants in a fortress-like compound in Kaloosha, close to the border.

Intelligence officers are also questioning 18 people captured during the raids.

In retaliation, angry tribesmen torched more than a dozen military vehicles -- some loaded with ammunition -- on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Pakistani Reporter, via Fox: They gunmen are Chechens, not Arabs, and the HVT might be a Chechen leader, rather than OBL or Ayman Al-Zawahiri (AAZ):

Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir told Fox News that he had spoken over the phone with the commander of the operation in the area, and was told they were battling Chechen (search) resistance, not Arabs.

Mir said he had been in the area in recent days and had seen "a lot of dead bodies."

"I have talked to the commander," he said. "He said most of the people fighting are not Arabs, they are Chechens," adding that the Pakistani forces may have a Chechan leader cornered, not Al Qaeda chief Usama bin Laden or Zawahri.

Rita Cosby on Fox: Of two dead bodies recovered from combat zone, one is Chechen, but the other is Arab.

Ayman Al-Zawahiri. Capture found on Free Republic.

The Dog That Ain't Barking Speculation! If the administration knew this was just a Chechen leader, it would be putting that story out there, in order to reduce expectations. If people are thinking it might be OBL or AAZ, they'll be disappointed when it turns out to be a Chechen leader. Russians will be thrilled, but Americans won't be.

So, the fact that the administration doesn't seem to be knocking this down (it seems Pakistani reporters are doing that), indicates, at least, that they think it could be OBL or AAZ.

Which doesn't mean it is, necessarily; just that the administration has no strong evidence to the contrary.

Fingers crossed.

Update (FoxNews): It's not only the fierceness of the resistance at this fortress that leads people to think AAZ is surrounded. It's also several points of intel.

While the Media Was Sleeping: Jobless Claims Fall to Lowest Level Since Clinton

A third report Thursday showed that the Index of Leading Economic Indicators was unchanged in February with six of the 10 forward-pointing economic measurements rising.

The Conference Board, a business research group in New York, said that even though the overall index did not increase, it remained at a high enough level to signal more strength in the economy was on the horizon.

...

The third straight weekly decline in jobless benefits raised hopes that a lengthy stretch of layoffs is coming to a close, setting the stage for businesses to finally begin rehiring laid-off workers.

While the presidential campaign is focusing on the 3 million manufacturing jobs lost since 2000 and mounting service-job losses to outsourcing, a little-noted Labor Department report last month made a startling projection: The blood-letting in U.S. manufacturing is over and job levels will remain stable for at least eight years.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates manufacturing -- which now employs about 14.5 million Americans -- will lose just 1 percent of jobs from 2002 to 2012, a decline already posted in the past two years.

Economic-consulting firm Global Insights supported the non-partisan agency's estimates -- and predicted a 200,000-job gain for the sector in the next two years.

"We may well have reached bottom" on manufacturing-job losses, said Robert Reich, labor secretary under President Clinton and now a visiting professor at University of California, Berkeley. "Since we've come out of recession, jobs may be coming back."

Whoa. Robert Reich said that? He's not the sort of guy who gladly announces good economic news, period, and especially not good economic news that can be credited to a Republican administration.

Said Global Insights Research Director Nigel Gault: "We've done so much in squeezing out inefficiencies, you reach a point at which you can't increase output without adding more workers. And the value of the dollar today makes it far easier for U.S. manufacturers to compete now than in 2000."

Evidence of the sector's recovery is mounting well beyond the individual plant projects cited above:

According to the latest unemployment report, the U.S. economy shed just 3,000 manufacturing jobs in February - the equivalent of 60 jobs per state. The decline was the smallest since August 2000 when the hemorrhaging began, and presages a likely rise in the months ahead, experts said.
From December to January, 19 states saw manufacturing jobs rise or remain unchanged on a seasonally adjusted basis. In Kentucky, businesses announced plans in January and February for 25 new plants and expansions that will add 1,950 jobs when completed.

In a Manpower survey released Tuesday, 31 percent of manufacturers of durable-goods such as electronics and cars expect to add jobs in the next three months while only 8 percent plan layoffs. For nondurable goods such as paper and food, 27 percent plan to add jobs and only 7 percent anticipate cuts. Both were the best readings since September 2000.

Republican Political Operatives Should Neither Be Seen Nor Heard

The media portrays Democratic political operatives like the vile James Carville as folksy working-man heroes who just happen to work in the arena of politics. Not so with Republican political operatives, who are depicted as Beltway Iagos.

We get it that Rove likes talking strategy. He loves entertaining reporters with his historical analyses of campaigns; he was fond of explaining that his plans for the 2000 campaign were dervived from McKinley's.

It's time, though, for Rove to shut up.

A lawyer's job is to convince a jury that the facts support his client, not that the facts may actually undermine his client but that he's so wicked-smart that the jury should ignore the facts and focus instead on his courtroom pyrotechnics.

Every headline that Rove gets hurts Bush. It's unfair that it should be this way, but that's the way it is.

Rove needs to disappear into the background. All of his smarty-pants strategizing can be explained for money in the form of a book. We don't need to hear how tricksy his operation might be now.

Finemann: The First Global Presidential Election

Finemann is usually nothing but center-left-blather -- liberals like Finemann avoid displaying their political bias by just writing the same five or six "pox on both houses" process pieces over and over again -- but today's blather is somewhat interesting, for a change.

Finemann opines that calling Kerry's foreign policy too "French" is a "nasty" bit of "nativism" -- in a different time, it would be rather obvious that American foreign policy ought to be American in terms of focus and interest, but that's too simplissime to Finemann and his media pals -- but other than that, the piece is more or less balanced.

Three Times a Charm: Rasmussen Makes it Three Polls Showing Bush Slightly Ahead of Kerry

In terms John "Flip" Kerry can understand: Voting against funding our troops, and trying to have it both ways on crucial binary foreign policy issues, is the third rail in American politics.

If you didn't get shocked before, it's because we didn't turn on the juice yet.

In related news, the New York Times is planning a front-page splash on the Rasmussen poll, running under the headline, It's Official: Survey Demonstrates that Choosy Mothers Do, as Claimed, Choose Jif.

Hotshot political/peanut butter reporter Adam Nagourney will again have the byline.

Cheney: Kerry Seems Only to Respect Those "Allies" Which are Stridently Anti-American

Drudge has the first details of Cheney's speech we've read. Cheney's saying what supporters of the war have been urging him to say for a year:

Cheney said: "Of the many nations that have joined our coalition, allies and friends of the United States, Senator Kerry speaks with open contempt.

"Great Britain, Australia, Italy, Spain, Poland, and more than 20 other nations have contributed and sacrificed for the freedom of the Iraqi people," Cheney said in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California.

"Senator Kerry calls these countries, quote, 'window-dressing'. They are in his words, a coalition of the coerced and the bribed.

Cheney went on: "How would Senator Kerry describe Great Britain? Coerced, or bribed? Or Italy, which recently lost 19 citizens killed by terrorists in Najaf.

"Was Italy's contribution just window-dressing?"

Cheney said that the Democratic contender "speaks as if only those who openly opposed America's objectives have a chance of earning his respect."

...

Kerry has since said that the president decieved Congress into passing the vote. But Cheney said: "Had the decision belonged to Senator Kerry, Saddam hussein would still be in power today in Iraq.

"In fact, Saddam Hussein would almost certainly still be in control of Kuwait."

Finally.

We remember watching the election 2000 fiasco. When Democrats started whining about "butterfly ballots" and "confused Jewish retirees," we started to think, "Jeepers, they're gonna whine like all get out if we don't just give in to them, like children pouting at losing at a game. Maybe we just should give in."

The normally-reliable Jon Podhertz at the NY Post ("Yeah, right, New York Post, Rupert Murdoch, Moonie, Yeah, right") even opined, in a lead Post editorial, that Bush and Cheney should just give in.

Bush and Cheney didn't. They fought harder than we'd imagined they could.

We forgot what we learned back then. These guys aren't sissies when it comes to hardball. They're not only willing to do engage in political knife-fighting, they seem to actually enjoy it.

We've been annoyed that Bush and Cheney haven't been fighting vigorously over the past three years. But then, the past three years weren't presidential election years.

Cheney rejected Kerry's criticism that the U.S.-led 34-nation coalition on Iraq -- which lacked some major traditional allies who refused to go along with the war -- was merely "window-dressing" and a "coalition of the coerced and the bribed."

"If such dismissive terms are the vernacular of the golden age of diplomacy Sen. Kerry promises, we're left to wonder which nations would care to join any future coalition," Cheney said.

We'll one-up him: Let's make it the Quote of John "Flip" Kerry's Entire Life. We'll be hearing this same claim -- "Splunge!" -- on every damn issue before the American people.

Thanks to Aaron Burr for directing us to Taegan Goddard's blog.

Update: NRO's Barbara Comstock lights Flippy up over this; the Corner notes that Cheney also smacked Kerry up about it in a speech today, which we're looking forward to seeing.

Credit Where Credit is Due: We just re-read Andrew Sullivan's bit on this quote, and Sullivan says that Kerry's quote "completely sums him up," which is pretty darn similar to us calling it the Quote of Kerry's Entire Life. We read AS earlier, so we read his take; we just didn't remember it clearly, or realize we were just plagiarizing him.

So, sorry about that. Sullivan made this small observation first. Or at least, he was the first person we read making it.

Well, Free Willis: Is it True or Isn't It?

One schtick of the left that drives us to distraction is their habit of seeming to deny a claim without actually denying it. They often don't actually refute, or even attempt to gainsay, a claim they don't like; they just start whining about the people making the claim.

If you write, for example, that Newsmax has an audiotape of Bill Clinton admitting and defending his decision not to accept the Sudan's offer to deliver Osama bin Ladin into US custody, they just say, "Ummm, yeah. Newsmax. Okay."

Are you suggesting, you ask, that Newsmax hired a Bill Clinton impersonator to record the speech?

"Pffaw. Newsmax. Yeah, right, Newsmax, right" is the final "rejoinder."

Basically, the left doesn't so much debate issues or argue about the truthfulness of factual reports so much as it immediately descends into an extremely bad Richard Belzer impression.

So, over on Oliver Free Willis' political-slash-carb-counters-anonymous site, he's whining about the report that FAA officials fault John Kerry for refusing to take reports of holes in airline security seriously. Rather than deny the charge, or at least rebut it or contextualize it or defend Kerry's actions, Free Willis simply goes into Detective Munch mode.

Does the left ever actually engage in reasoned discussion, or does it just mutter to itself like an insane old man?

Addendum: We forgot the thing we hate most about the Detective Munch Technique. The left never specifies which aspect of a story they're claiming is untrue, or how the information was falsified if untrue. They simply issue blanket "Yeah, rights," without being so sporting as to offer up their specific reasons for doubts.

They do this intentionally. If they offered a specific complaint, this complaint could be rationally discussed... and more than likely disproven. They don't want to even have to argue about this, so they refuse to take any specific stance which could lead to reasoned discussion.

Instead, by issuing blanket "Yeah, right" Belzer-demurrers, they invite their opponents' to guess at where they're claiming the dishonesty may lie, and thereby demand that their opponents not refute one specific charge of dishonesty, but rather all conceivable possible charges of dishonesty.

If you've ever been in one these maddening sorts of "arguments" with a lefty, you know how childish they can be. They just refuse to specify their own actual postion, and make you guess at what it might be; then, when you spend twenty minutes disproving a possible objection, they announce you guessed wrong, that wasn't their objection; try again.

Pennsylvanians Voting "Not Proven" on Case for the Scottish Senator?

Look, we absolutely despise Arlen Spector. He's been holding us hostage for years -- we can't afford to boot his ass out, because we need that Senate seat, or so we imagine; and yet he votes as liberal as all get out, especially in the five years of a term which are not directly before an election.

It is time for him to go. Lose the seat or not, it is time for the liberal RINO from Brigadoon to go.

NBC Spun its Bush-Leading Poll as Unreliable, Too

Kausfiles' second item today is a must-read. NBC also chose to report its own poll, showing Bush ahead by two points, as unreliable; it emphasized the finding that voters confidence in the economy had "plummetted."

But the delicious bias didn't stop there. Wait till you read how they spun the polls' findings on gay marriage. They actually said... No, we don't want to spoil the surprise.

Hostage Europe?

Iran: Well, Which Is It?

At this point, we don't know if Iran is just having a bit of fun with fireworks, as CNN reports, in a kind of Zoroasteran Fourth of July happy-party-fun-time, or if it's in the midst of an open revolt.

We're disinclined to believe anything CNN claims, especially about a foreign nation, given their habit of sucking up to tyrants. But at this point, no one really except the student committees are reporting open revolt.

Today's Apolitical Top Ten

Yeahp, doing one of these everyday on a political topic has just plain run us out of comedic gas. As yesterday's lame Top Ten showed.

So, we're switching it up a bit.

Contrary to the promise of the cartoon's title, it just isn't true that all dogs go to heaven. Some dogs, like some people, are just plain bad, and they go to hell, sadly enough. And in hell, they're punished for their wicked dog ways.

We don't like the idea of dogs in hell, but that's just the way it is, and there's no point arguing about it.

...from the Home Office in Pocatello, Idaho...Top Ten Torments in Dog-Hell

10. Forced to wear humiliating protective neck-cones 24/7

9. No matter how far down you put your tongue into the bowl, delicious toilet-water remains tantalizingly out of reach

8. Five Words: Giant Fire-Breathing Demonic Squirrels

7. Every night you have same haunting dream of your master jingling a leash; but then you realize that the master holding the leash is actually you; plus, you're completely naked and late for dog SAT's

Iran: False Alarms?

This CNN story seems to suggest that the "fires" in teheran are the equivalent of illegal Fourth of July fireworks-- a bit of festive minor lawbreaking at worst.

NRO seems to suggest, a bit cheekily, that CNN is again doing the bidding of a corrupt regime.

We don't know, and we suspect that the earlier reports were more hopeful than factual. So we're taking down the sirens, and we apologize for hyping the story beyond what now appears to be the point of prudent regard.

Update:IranMania also seems pretty convinced that the only thing going on here is the widespread celebration of a long-banned Zoroasteran fire ritual, reluctantly allowed by the hardline clerics.

Let's Go to the Videotape: Clinton Had bin Ladin in Predator-Drone's Gunsights, Let Him Go

Gary Schroen, a former CIA station chief in Pakistan, says the White House required the CIA to attempt to capture bin Laden alive, rather than kill him.

What impact did the wording of the orders have on the CIA's ability to get bin Laden? "It reduced the odds from, say, a 50 percent chance down to, say, 25 percent chance that we were going to be able to get him," said Schroen.

A Democratic member of the 9/11 commission says there was a larger issue: The Clinton administration treated bin Laden as a law enforcement problem.

Bob Kerry, a former senator and current 9/11 commission member, said, "The most important thing the Clinton administration could have done would have been for the president, either himself or by going to Congress, asking for a congressional declaration to declare war on al-Qaida, a military-political organization that had declared war on us."

Pardon Our Inaccessability

Blogspot seems to have decided to try "chilling" our right to free speech by pouring bacon-fat all over our servers every five or ten minutes.

It will not work, Blogspot.

As our motto says: You Just Can't Fight the Funny.

Update: Blogspot claims that they're not attempting to repress our precious right to speak out, but rather that they're "replacing" a "filer" and are experiencing "hardware problems."

Okay, sure, whatever you say, Blogspot. "Filer." Giggle.

They say they expect to have this problem fixed "soon." And if our experience with computer technical assistance is any guide, that means it will be permanently fixed within the next three or four minutes.

Iran: The Fuse is Lighted...?

I am listening to KRSI (Radio Sedaye Iran) right now. There are many Iranians calling (from Tehran, and Gorgan, etc.).

All reports indicate that almost every neighborhood in Tehran is on fire. People are throwing home-made bombs, Molotov cocktails, etc. into the homes of mullahs, and burning pictures of Khamenei in complete defiance of his recent edict to mourn during the month of Muharram.

...

As a measure of defiance of Khamenei's Islamic Rule, and in celebration of ancient (non-Islamic) Persian customs, Iranians have taken to the streets in complete defiance of Khamenei's edict, saying that they will 'burn the mullahs out of their homes'. They are celebrating Chahar Shanbeh Soori. There are huge bonfires, bomb-throwing, merriment and the welcoming of the last days of the mullahcracy. In their own way Iranians are making a huge statement.

You can listen to the news yourself (in Farsi of course) everyone is very happy and celebrating defying the mullahs and burning of Khamenei's picture and trying to burn all mullah's houses. There are people calling from all over Tehran, from Gorgan, and northern provinces... It is amazing!

There are riots going on; the government is brutally cracking down on them. But how widespread is this actually? Is this just students?

One article says that "millions" are in open revolt. Trouble is, this website is run by anti-government students. Our prayers are with them, but, you know, we can't take their word on such things as the Gospel truth.

Sweet: Coming Quarter May Be Strongest for Jobs in Three Years

MILWAUKEE - People looking for work this spring could find the strongest U.S. job market in more than three years, even as companies remain reluctant to hire, a new survey shows.

Roughly one in four employers plan to add workers in the second quarter of the year to keep pace with increased demand for their products or services, according to a survey of 16,000 businesses by Manpower Inc., set for release Tuesday.

"Someone looking for a job no doubt will have an easier time now than in recent memory, than in the past two or three years," said Jeffrey Joerres, Manpower's chief executive officer and chairman. "It's still going to be difficult in that companies are going to begin this process very cautiously."

...

The second-quarter results, when seasonally adjusted, are the strongest since the first quarter of 2001, soon after the economy officially entered a recession, according to Manpower, a Glendale, Wis.-based staffing company.

The number of companies expecting to hire is nearly twice that of a year ago and marks the third straight quarter of increased hiring projections.

We just know this is going to be the lead story on Rather's broadcast tonight!

Rachel Corrie, the Cutest Li'l Terrorist in the Whole Wide World

Little Green Footballs has a reality check for all the pro-enemy leftists out there eulogizing this virulently anti-American, terrorist-aiding little scamp, or "the 'dozered darling," as FloridaCracker immortalized her.

Cute as a button? Without a doubt.

Flat as a button? Also true.

As likely as a button to walk around and engage in basic metabolic functions? The truth of this too cannot be doubted.

This is the sixteen-thousandth time that Rachel Corrie has been celebrated by the left as "anti-war" when in fact she was merely "pro-terrorist" since George W. Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq on May 3.

A Pretty Good Amateur Bush Ad

We were prepared for the worst when we followed a Free Republic link to this amateur Bush ad, because, let's face it, there's a lot of crap on the Internet. (Theodore Sturgeon's axiom that "90% of anything is crap" needs to be increased to 97% with respect to the web.)

But it actually is a pretty darn good ad. Watching it, we actually began saying to ourselves, "You know what? The economy is doing pretty well," and we've been in a blue funk over the economy for a month.

There's nothing particularly noteworthy about the ad except it dares to state what must be stated: that John Kerry voted against funding our troops at war. No matter how he tries to spin this, no matter how hard the Democrats shriek that Iraq cannot be used as an issue except by Democrats against Bush, this was an important vote, and John Kerry made, as usual, the gutless call.

He voted against funding the troops because mean Howard Dean forced him to. Well, the chickenshits are coming home to roost, Johnny.

When a CBS News poll found John Kerry leading George W. Bush by 48 to 43 percent amongst registered voters, Dan Rather reported it on the February 16 CBS Evening News, and when another CBS News poll two weeks ago put Kerry up by a mere one point over Bush, by 47 to 46 percent with registered voters, the February 28 CBS Evening News highlighted the finding. But on Monday, while the CBSNews.com home page, for much of the afternoon and into the evening featured the results of a new CBS News/New York Times poll, with a headline which declared, "Bush Moves Ahead of Kerry," the CBS Evening News didn't utter a word about the new numbers which put Bush up over Kerry by 46 to 43 percent with registered voters.

Two weeks ago, the CBS Evening News emphasized how Bush's approval rating had fallen below 50 percent, but the new poll found his approval rating back above 50 percent -- but that too went unmentioned Monday night.

And it gets better. Because MRC notes that while CBS just plum didn't have the time to report Bush was back ahead, it did have time to report that 100 hairy-armpitted Anthropology majors named "Cookie" ambled listlessly in the street while banging on pots "liberated" from the dorm kitchen:

A small anti-war protest march by barely 200 people across the street from the White House generated a full CBS Evening News story on Monday night in which reporter Bob Orr ignored the far-left political agenda of the participants as he emphasized how they were just typical relatives of those in the military: "These protesters -- mothers, fathers, husbands and wives -- read the roll of America's dead, placing the names of their loved ones in a makeshift coffin." Orr featured an interview with one father in which Orr stressed how he was pro-war at one time: "You weren't against the war at the outset?" Father: "No, not at all." And Orr painted them all as potential victims of the right-wing thought police: "Now, at the risk of having their own patriotism questioned, families say they're mounting a critical home front mission."

Skipped over by Orr, the political agenda of the leftist groups which organized the protest. The home page of a group called "Military Families Speak Out," a representative of which Orr quoted, features a politically-loaded screed, in the form of a letter to President Bush, from a mother whose son was killed in Iraq...

Meanwhile, NRO notes that this nano-protest was covered, while CBS regularly ignores the 50,000+ March for Life each year. We noted yesterday that CNN had "forgot" to cover this year's march, after being tipped by Aaron Burr.

Sky News: France Receives "Serious" Terror Threat

When we reject this arrogant "orientalism" and begin paying close attention to the actual cultural signifiers of our Muslim friends, rather than imposing upon them a false Westernized accounting of how they should think and behave?

"The Way They... Surround" a Poll Showing Bush Re-Taking the Lead

Well, we don't even bother noting this ourselves anymore -- it's just too predictable and automatic, like the phases of the moon -- but yes, the New York Times has once again taken a poll whose most important and most interesting finding is good news for Republicans and instead chosen to spin it as bad news for Republicans (the nation is more "concerned" about the nation's direction, even as Bush edges ahead).

Kausfiles is all over it, as usual. He recalls that the same reporter, apparently intentionally, blew his own scoop in 2002 when he chose to bury the interesting news that Republicans were surging ahead in the midterms. Rather than cause any of the New York Times' readers any discomfort or worry, Adam Nagourney politely spun the poll as a good news for Democrats.

This is the eight-hundredth poll the New York Times has claimed shows bad news for Bush since George W. Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq on May 3.

The Hell with the Law; We're Doing Social Justice

College Capers

by John Moores

Forbes Magazine, March 29, 2004 issue

(no link available; article is not available on-line)

Defying voters, UC, Berkeley is admitting kids with low SAT scores and rejecting high achievers.When Governor Gray Davis appointed me to the Board of Regents of the University of California in 1999, I recognized the university's responsibility to extend the opportunity for academic achievement to as many capable students as the resources of the nation's premier public university allow. Sadly, today's UC admissions policies are victimizing students--not just those unfairly denied admission but also many with low college entrance exam scores who were admitted and can't compete.

The California electorate voted to stop racial preference in college admission in 1996. Since then UC administrators have been manipulating the admissions system and, I believe, thwarting the law. (Although I have been the board's chairman since 2002, I'm just one vote.) UC, Berkeley, the top school in the UC system, is admitting "underrepresented minorities" with very low SAT scores while rejecting many applicants with high SAT scores.

Prompted by many complaints from parents whose high-scoring children were rejected by Berkeley, I started probing admissions records. I learned that 359 students with combined SAT scores of 1,000 or less were admitted to Berkeley in 2002, accounting for 3% of the 10,905 students admitted that year. (The national SAT average is about 1,000.) Of those 359 students, 231 were from underrepresented minorities--meaning blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans. Only 19 of the low scorers were white. Some 1,421 Californians with SAT scores above 1,400 applying to the same departments at Berkeley were not admitted. Of those, 662 were Asian-American, while 62 were from the underrepresented minorities.

How did the university get away with discriminating so blatantly against Asians? ...

The article then discusses how Berkeley is thwarting the law by evaluating students according to vaguely-defined hardship/hard-luck factors, like being the child of a single parent, etc. There is no firm scoring system for such factors, which allows Berkeley to fudge up students' "qualifications" -- and thus allows them to simply admit the same students they would have under explicitly race-based preferences. In other words, because these hard-luck factors are so poorly defined and capriciously weighted, they offer the university perfect cover to practice race-based admissions while calling it something else.

Fake Title

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton said Sunday that likely presidential nominee John Kerry was right when he branded Republicans last week "the most crooked, you know, lying group I have ever seen."

Calling Kerry's comment "quite descriptive of reality," Clinton told an audience at Boston's Kennedy Center that the Massachusetts Democrat had been targeted by the same "vast right-wing conspiracy" that impeached her husband.

[She said it was important to fight back against their attacks] "because that is the way that you convey the strength to take on this particular network of forces that stand behind the president[.]" -- Newsmax

...from the Home Office in Pocatello, Idaho...Top Ten Members of Hillary Clinton's New Right Wing Conspiracy "Network of Forces"

10. Catherine Bell from JAG (six thousand rightwing extremists sign up for the US military every year due to each one of her tremendous knockers)

The Death Card

A reader just asked if we knew anything about some supposed habit of Special Forces or US troops generally leaving behind an Ace of Spades "calling card" on the bodies of troops they'd killed.

Honestly, we don't know anything about that. We didn't even know about the legend of the practice before now. We should have suspected, because we're always getting accidental traffic from people searching for "Ace of Spades death card Special Forces" or the like.

At any rate, we did a litte searching ourselves, and we found this interesting page about the alleged practice of leaving behind a black ace. The site plays a loop of a scene from Apocalypse Now where a soldier says he's leaving behind a "death card" to "let Charlie know who did this."

We're definitely going to have to crib some of those Death Cards for our logo.

CNN also has obtained a document posted on an Internet message board analysts believe is used by al Qaeda and its sympathizers that spells out the terrorist group's plan to separate Spain from the U.S.-led coalition on Iraq.

The strategy spelled out in the document, posted last December on the Internet, calls for using terrorist attacks to drive Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's Partido Popular from power and replace it with the Socialists.

Drudge Gets It Wrong?

We're still searching for citations, but unless our memory is off -- and it's usually fairly good -- Mel Gibson was never a supporter of this war. We're pretty sure we remember intereviews with him two years ago where he he came out as fairly anti-war, which is, you know, perfectly in line with Catholic teaching.

He was big, if our memory serves us, on the "old men sending young men to die" schtick and the "powerful deceivers tricking us into war" schtick.

But that hardly explains why this absolutely insignificant non-event was the top top headline throughout the day.

"Aaron Burr" tips us to a cool little trick. If you search the CNN site for "March for Life" (order by date, for conveneince), you'll find no article whatsoever on the January 22, 2004 March for Life, which was attended by an estimated 50,000.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE! RD Brewer tips us that the crack CNN staff is still working on this scary-important story, and that additional research and reportage now shows that over 100 hairy-armpitted girls and weedy guys in Cat-in-the-Hat hats were in attendance.

Well! Okay, if it's more than 100, we take back all of our previous quibbles! We thought it was only 60. But, okay, 100! There you go! Our personal dividing line between "important mass protest" and "just a couple of jerkoffs dervish-dancing to a Phish-jam" is 88.

Will the number go up through the night? Might it hit 150 by 12 midnight? Who can say, who can know...

As Drudge would say: DEVELOPING HARD...

SELF-PROMOTIONAL UPDATE! Hey, we at Ace of Spades get 100 "marchers" -- Internet marchers, that is -- by 9 in the morning! Some days, we get that many by 8:55!

"All the Leaders of the West Were Warned, Weren't They?"

"We were... warned"? Why yes, Robert, we were; and thanks for noticing. It is indeed a fact that we were "warned;" but it only someone actually allied with the murderers would think of using such a taunt.

Read this propaganda from Fallujah Rose. Just read it. If you can. To be honest, we had to stop reading two or three paragraphs in.

Oooh, must be a big march. Or at least a moderately-sized one. After all, it's CNN's top headline.

The first paragraph?

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- More than 60 people gathered Monday in Washington for a march to the White House, calling for an end to U.S. military action in Iraq.

More...

than...

60.

How many more? Seems like if there's sixty or so, you could get an accurate count, with no need of high-tech photographic-analysis crowd-estimating by police.

Not only could you get an accurate count, you could get everyone's name and take them all out to Appleby's without breaking the bank.

A photo accompanies the story. The photo is of a single protestor, shot upwards from the knee. This p-o-v has the -- coincidental, we're sure -- effect of hiding the fact that there is almost no one accompanying this single protestor.

Again, we're sure that's just a coincidence. Of course no reporter would attempt to hide facts from the public.

The photo's caption is amusing. "Dozens of protestors..." it begins. "Dozens"?

We're pretty sure that if all the DC warbloggers arranged it, they could all march on the capital within a couple of hours. And we figure they could get more than 60 people to march in support of the war.

Do you think CNN would make this their number one top-headline?

Or is 60 stinking layabouts congregating on the streets to arhythmically beat drums and smoke clove cigarettes only a "top headline" when usable for liberal spin?

The toll... rises? Well of course it rises, in the sense that the toll can't actually go down; we can't resurrect dead soldiers. One a name is added to that list, it's on there forever; one can only add to the list of the dead.

But that meaning is absurd because it's so obvious as to be stupid. Yes, the toll in Iraq rises; and so does the world death toll.

So what does the New York Times intend you to take from the headline?

That the death toll is not just rising, but that the rate of killings is rising. That's the "rise" we're primarily concerned with, and isn't it cute that the New York Times manages to imply that the rate of killings is increasing while it's actually doing the exact opposite.

This is the six-hundredth laughably-biased headline in the New York Times since George W. Bush announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq on May 3.

Kerry: Bombing Tripoli "Disproportionate"

Reported by Nick Kronos on TPW:

While I stated that my initial inclination was to support the President, I pointed out that two essential tests had to be met in determining whether or not the U.S. action was appropriate. First, the United States had to have irrefutable evidence directly linking the Qaddafi regime to a terrorist act and, second, our response should be proportional to that act. The evidence was irrefutable that the Qaddafi regime was behind the Berlin disco bombing which claimed the lives of two innocent victims and injured 200 others.

However, as to the second test, it is obvious that our response was not proportional to the disco bombing and even violated the Administration's own guidelines to hit clearly defined terrorist targets, thereby minimizing the risk to innocent civilians. I believe it was a mistake for us to select as targets areas of heavy civilian concentration, as well as to include the family and home of the head of state of another country - no matter how repugnant we find the leader.

The fact that the bombing resulted in the deaths of at least 17 civilians certainly undermined the Administration's own justification for the raid. Beyond this point, however, is the fact that we are not going to solve the problem of terrorism with this kind of retaliation. There are numerous other actions we can take, in concert with our allies, to bring significant pressure to bear on countries supporting or harboring terrorists.
Let's bring some pressure to bear. In concert with our allies.

[From a Kerry letter quoted in Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism, by Sean Hannity.]

Kerry's big on "pressure" but never a real fan of actually doing anything, huh?

ALISO VIEJO, Calif. (AP) - City officials were so concerned about the potentially dangerous properties of dihydrogen monoxide that they considered banning foam cups after they learned the chemical was used in their production.

Then they learned, to their chagrin, that dihydrogen monoxide - H2O for short - is the scientific term for water.

"It's embarrassing," said City Manager David J. Norman. "We had a paralegal who did bad research."

The paralegal apparently fell victim to one of the many official looking Web sites that have been put up by pranksters to describe dihydrogen monoxide as "an odorless, tasteless chemical" that can be deadly if accidentally inhaled.

It is estimated that six hundred Americans have died due an inadvertant ingestion of DMHO since George W. Bush announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq on May 3.

Today's Top Ten (and then some)

Since we were kids, we always enjoyed the humorous and sometimes poetic group-names given to different animals. It was interesting to us that one said a school of fish but a pack of wolves; it was delightful that one said a parliament of owls and an exultation of larks. A shrewdness of apes, a crash of rhinoceroses, an ostentation of peacocks-- just grand poetry.

And of course it was just flat-out cool that one said a murder of crows.

But this practice was also extended to naming groups of people. One could say a skulk of thieves (cool!), a rascal of boys (cute!), and, if one could keep a straight face, a neverthriving of jugglers (goofy!).

We threw the crack Ace of Spades HQ Etymology and Semiotics Department at into researching other collective-names. After 1200 billable hours of research, all paid for by the ultra-secretive cryptofascist benefactor we know only as "Mr. Tranh," we've discovered even more collective-nouns for groups of people, these more relevant to the world we live in today. We plan to use these in everyday conversation; we hope you'll find some use for them too.

... from the Home Office in Pocatello, Idaho...Top Ten Lesser-Known Collective Nouns for Different Groups of People

10. A gesticulation of Italians

9. A corruption of Congressmen

8. A moustache of policemen

7. A tumescence of pornstars

6. A shriek of liberals

5. A waddle of Rosie O'Donnells

4. An armpit of feminists

3. An insignificance of Canadians

2. A malodor of Frenchmen (also acceptable: a quavering of Frenchmen; a surrender of Frenchmen)

...and the Number One Lesser-Known Collective Noun for a Group of People...

Terrorism Works

At least it works with cowards.

The Spanish have made a cowardly choice-- it's better to appease murderers than stand with America and confront those murderers.

That's the old joke-- when two hunters are being pursued by a bear, neither hunter has to actually outpace the bear. One hunter just needs to run faster than the other, because the bear is only interested in eating the slower man.

And the Spanish have decided to run very fast indeed.

It should be noted that what the Spanish have elected -- to side with the terrorists against America; there's really no other way to put it -- is pretty much what Europe has been urging with regard to Israel for twenty years. It's better to side with the murderers amongst the Muslims, these terribly-complex moral thinkers decided, than with the innocent Israeli civlians, because innocent Israeli civilians don't hijack planes and machine-gun airline ticketing counters. Which is what some angry Muslims tend to do.

We actually were fairly anti-Israel throughout the eighties and nineties. We were younger, and dumber. But we also a bit more cynical (which we don't always take to be a bad thing). And we decided that, while the Muslim terrorists were vicious murderers, they were also a threat to our own interests, and therefore we decided, rather coldly, that Israel would just have to sacrificed to some extent in favor of our own interests.

What has made us so pro-Israel isn't that Israel has behaved better since then, or the Muslim murderers worse. (Although, of course, the Muslim murderers have behaved quite a bit worse.)

It's that, since 9-11, we saw Europe urging upon us what we had urged upon Israel. "Look," our very sophisticated European allies cooed, "it's just awful that 2800 people died on that September day and all, but honestly, you've just got to take this one for the team. If you attempt to fight back or defend yourselves, it will only make things inconvenient for us; and we're sorry, but we would rather not be inconvenienced. So, Old Chap, loyalty and gratitude is nice and all, but we're just going to have to insist you roll over on this one and leave your slaughtered dead unavenged; it is better to live on your knees than die on your feet."

It was wrong for us to have urged the same on Israel. When the same deal was offered to us, we became quite enraged about it. And because of that rage we felt, we could never urge the selling-out of another innocent victim to murderous terrorists again.

We support Israel not because we think they're perfect little angels, or even because they're a democracy. We're a cynical bunch; we could care, quite frankly, were Israel a repressive monarchy.

We support Israel because, on September 11, 2001, we became Israelis-- subject to mass-murder on a heart-wrenching scale, which was quite bad enough; but further subjected to the cynical, self-interested, mercenary, immoral hectoring of our European superiors who decided, for us, that we'd just have to lie back and enjoy it, in the interests of keeping Europe a nice little post-historical socialist paradise.

The actual attack of September 11 was a cause of righteous anger. The betrayal of America by its so-called allies following September 11 was something else again.

It clarified the situation, certainly; the cowardly vote by the craven Spaniards has clarified it still further. We are alone in this, like the Israelis, surrounded by a largely hateful world which would only be too happy to finish Hitler's plan, or at least assist in it, in the interests of its own self-interest and convenience.

Is it wrong to call the Spaniards "craven" while they're still burying their dead? We don't think so. We think America had about 24 hours of "solidarity" before the demands for "restraint" started flowing from the capitals of Europe; we're outside of that same 24 hour grace period now. We've honored the 24 hour indecent interval we were granted; and now it's time for us to begin hectoring the Europeans.

If there's any consolation, it's that Europe as we know it will be all but gone within forty or so years anyway; as they're going to be under new management-- permanently -- by 2050 anyway, it makes sense for them to begin sucking up to the the new bosses on the way.

We're struck by several related questions. Zapatera's Socialist Party has vowed to withdraw the smallish contingent of Spanish troops (about 1300) assisting in Iraq. That is his right.

But... is Zapatera one of those "world leaders" who wants John Kerry to be elected president?

If so, what effect does this have on John Kerry's core complaint about Bush's foreign policy-- the need to bring our great friends and allies along with us on military missions?

If John Kerry's great and good friends on the European left are so opposed to assisting us at all, how exactly can he say that he could have succeeded where he claims Bush failed at convincing Europeans to aid in our fight?

We'd like John Kerry to explain precisely what good such capricious and craven "allies" are at all. We'd like him to explain why we should allow American foreign policy to be held hostage by the self-interested, cynical veto of such nihilistic cowards.

Stem Cells May Cure... Baldness

MS, Alzheimer's, etc. -- these are diseases that affect only a small fraction of the population.

But once they figure out a way to use stem cells to cure baldness, that's the end of the debate; men will simply not let any moral or philosophical qualms stand between them and a fuller, thicker, more youthful head of hair.

The only worse headline for the anti's would be Stem Cells Linked to Penis Growth.

The anti-war group that John Kerry was the principal spokesman for debated and voted on a plot to assassinate politicians who supported the Vietnam War.

Mr. Kerry denies being present at the November 12-15, 1971, meeting in Kansas City of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and says he quit the group before the meeting. But according to the current head of Missouri Veterans for Kerry, Randy Barnes, Mr. Kerry,who was then 27,was at the meeting, voted against the plot, and then orally resigned from the organization.

Mr. Barnes was present as part of the Kansas City host chapter for the 1971 meeting and recounted the incident in a phone interview with The New York Sun this week.

In addition to Mr. Barnes’s recollection placing Mr. Kerry at the Kansas City meeting, another Vietnam veteran who attended the meeting, Terry Du-Bose, said that Mr. Kerry was there.

There are at least two other independent corroborations that the antiwar group Vietnam Veterans Against the War, of which Mr. Kerry was the most prominent national spokesman, considered assassinating American political leaders who favored the war.

The fascinating thing is that this story is so outrageous that it will get no play in the media whatsoever. John Kerry is "too big to fail;" they'll simply ignore this story, because it's so explosive.

Imagine-- an actual nominated candidate for President once debated armed sedition and treason against the country while part of a radical group. (Again, to be fair-- he voted against the plan. Nice triangulation & moderation, John!)

Does anyone think the media would be reluctant to report on, say, George W. Bush debating and then voting against a plan to begin lynching blacks?